Everything is in a perpetual change, is always changing. Nothing remains in the same condition, it changes or perfects itself: in good or evil. We won’t learn how to be humble until we endure many pains in our hearts. And we’ll endure many pains in our hearts before till we learn how to be humble. God stands aside and lets us suffer pains under our left rib, to see what a stink we have there and we say: He bit my heart and I can’t forgive him!
Why don’t you forgive him when you are just like him, when you upset others in the same way ? Now learn how to be quiet. We won’t learn how to be huble until we have suffered many pains in our hearts. The Holy Fathers say: `If we don’t strive to humble ourselves, God will cease humbling Himself.` God won’t stop humbling us by means of someone else who is near us. Someone will upset us, will make us angry, till we learn to stay quiet whenever someone wants to upset us. Then we’ll be experienced. We will be attacked but we’ll remain quiet. We’ll be assaulted from all sides and we’ll look around peacefully, we’ll keep our inner peace – we don’t want to give our inner peace on something so cheap. Then the soul becomes meek and humble and goes through this world with a full understanding of life. Then the people think and say: `I know how you were before, obdurate and now you seem you’ve become unfeeling, everything is the same to you.` No, this is not indifference, but a victory over evil! God gives us power to defeat the evil with peace.
God gives us power to defeat the evil with peace. As long as we are here in this body it is proper to defeat all these by the power of God. And this is what God wants from us, to reject the evil by understanding it and by turning with all our heart and all our being towards Him. The disposition we have for our fellow men is the disposition we have for God. Our interests and plans hinder us a lot in life. Our interest and plan number one, then the second, the third, the fourth and the fifth. We think that we won’t achieve anything if we don’t plan, if we don’t count, if we don’t do anything. We must strive to do things in accordance with our conscience, but not in a hurry because the enemy wrecks us in an instant. In that hurry we don’t care if we hurt someone or if we damage someone’s interest or if we hinder someone – because we don’t pay attention to that, we are too much focused on our plans. And thus we sin against our neighbor during our life. And when we do a wrong to our neighbor we don’t sin against a human being but against God. Because God dwells mystically in every soul and He rests everywhere. And the way we treat our neighbor is the way we treat God. We should understand that we are not on the good path if we treat lovingly those who have love for us and we treat with hate those who have hate for us. This is not the right path because we should be sons of light, sons of love, sons of God, children of God. Yes, we should be His children, we should have His character – a divine character, a character of peace, of love, of kindness. If you don’t oppose the cunning one you keep your inner peace. We know how God was when He was in body – he cared for all even for those who persecuted Him.
He is an Almighty God – a single thought or word of Him and everything falls apart, everything crumbles. But He showed us the way, how we should learn to protect ourselves of evil.
The Lord tells us : `Do not oppose the cunning.` (Mt 5:39)
He says that we shouldn’t oppose the cunning one and this means to preserve our inner peace. The opposition is something bad, it aims to pay something with the same amount and then a war breaks out – which is a feed for the fallen spirits from the air. And when he attacks us and doesn’t find any opposition then their weapons fall down and they are defeated. That’s why we should struggle at any cost with the help of God and pray without cease: God, save my inner peace, teach me to be a quiet, peaceful and kind soul – like your angels and saints.
For this reason we should always have our mind at God. We give all our attention and care, all our life, feelings and thoughts, everything we have to those whom we love in this life, to our family, to our loved ones. This is what God wants from us – to think of Him, because He is our Father. He rightly asks this from us, to give Him back what He has given us for our good, for partaking the divine joy, peace and life, for not being strangers and tormenting ourselves. That’s why we should learn to pray without cease to the Lord to seek Him in a ceaseless prayer. The Holy Fathers prayed: `God deliver me from oblivion!` The Holy Fathers say: When we wake up we should turn our thoughts to God, to unite them with Him. And we should remember of Him all day long without cease.
Source: Starets Tadei, Your life is how your thoughts are, selection p.175-177
